REU Site: Community-Soil-Air-Water: A Geoscience Learning Ecosystem for Urban Environments

Georgia State University will host the Community-Soil-Air-Water (CSAW) Research Experience for Undergraduates. This REU site will train 10 students per summer to conduct geoscience-focused community-based research. Community-based research focuses on the need to do research with and for communities. Students will work with community fellows, graduate students, post-baccalaureate researchers, and faculty to develop research questions. Teams will work from an interdisciplinary perspective while drawing on geoscience disciplinary knowledge. The research outcomes will help empower community members with knowledge about their environmental-related issues. This Research Experience for Undergraduates program will train ten undergraduate students each summer in community-based research, with a focus on geoscience topics. Scholarship shows that answering pressing questions around environmental threats requires training scientists to work equitably and accountably with communities and community partners. With research themes of community, soil, air, and water, CSAW REU students from diverse backgrounds will be integrated into the larger CSAW learning ecosystem of M.S. and post-baccalaureate researchers. A diverse group of community fellows, faculty, M.S., and post-baccalaureate researchers will mentor and guide the REU students, who will answer community-driven questions from an interdisciplinary perspective while drawing on key disciplinary knowledge in the fields of geography, critical GIS, climate change, hydrology, soil sciences, and more. This mentoring structure will cross multiple career stages and career paths, allowing for and amplifying mutual learning and collaboration in place-based action research. Students will conduct place-based research around themes of community mapping, soil lead and arsenic contamination from brownfields, air temperature and weather extremes, and water pollution and industrial discharges. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.